Health is the New Pepsi – Learning How to Sell Health like a Marketer

Introduction

In the world of healthy eating, marketing is half the battle. Big Food knows exactly how to sell us soda, fast food – anything unhealthy. It is time for public health practitioners to take a cue from Big Food and their highly successful commercial marketing strategies, to sell a product that everyone needs and wants - health.

Approach

The barrier to selling health like a marketer is that most public health practitioners lack experience with marketing, an industry traditionally seen as a “competitor” of public health. Even so, the key to a successful nutrition campaign is to strategize and communicate like a marketer. Marketers use behavioral research to know exactly when audiences are open to buying their products. Public health practitioners can adapt this approach by targeting audiences on Mondays, a day that research shows people are “open to buy” healthy behaviors.

Results

The “Meatless Monday” campaign provides a prime example of how to successfully leverage “The Monday Effect” to grow a grassroots campaign into a global movement.  Nationwide surveys and studies of context-specific Meatless Monday promotions have shown that the campaign has a significant impact on decisions to cut back on meat. Awareness of the campaign has since expanded across the world, with highly influential campaigns in over 30 countries, including Israel, Brazil, and Hong Kong.

Discussion

This session will provide several simple, actionable tips for how public health practitioners can borrow techniques from commercial marketers to improve the receptivity of nutrition messages and grow grassroots nutrition campaigns.